Boulder County commissioners adopt $319.6 million budget for 2013

BOULDER -- Boulder County commissioners on Thursday approved a $319.6 million spending package for next year's county government services, programs and projects.

No tax-rate increases are built into the 2013 county budget adopted by Commissioners Cindy Domenico, Will Toor and Deb Gardner.

Boulder County's property tax levy, for example, will be 24.645 mills -- the same as this year's levy.

Property tax collections are expected to total about $138.4 million next year, compared with the $136.7 million in property-tax revenues that were built into the original $321.7 million budget for the current 2012 fiscal year that the Board of County Commissioners adopted a year ago..

Boulder County's sales tax rate will remain at 0.8 percent. Boulder County sales and use taxes collections, along with specific-ownership taxes on motor vehicle registrations, are projected to total $39.5 million in 2013, up from the more than $38.1 million that the originally adopted 2012 budget had included.

Some of the county's other revenue sources are expected to decline next year. For example, income from the sale of recycled materials is projected to decrease by nearly $1.8 million. Next year's budget also reflects a $3.1 million decrease in a federal Better Buildings grant for energy-conservation programs, since that original grant is expiring.

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At Thursday's budget-adoption meeting, which didn't include a public hearing, county commissioners made no mention of objections that some Boulder County taxpayers have registered about the county's continuing annual awards of money to the Boulder Valley Women's Health Center and its Longmont Teen Clinic.

The Boulder Valley Women's Health Center, which got $202,250 from Boulder County government this year, is in line for $207,000 in the 2013 budget, part of more than $4.7 million in distributions the commissioners have approved awarding to nonprofits providing various community services.

Critics of that funding had objected to the county's funding of the nonprofit center and the clinic because those facilities give teens condoms and contraceptives without their parents' knowledge or consent.

The center's supporters, however, as well as the commissioners themselves, have defended the funding of the health services and family planning counseling the center provides, particularly to women and girls with little or no insurance.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the commissioners had gotten 438 emails in support of continued county financial support of the Boulder Valley Women's Health Center, and 242 emails objecting to that funding, according to Carrie Haverfield, the constituent liaison employee on the commissioner's staff.

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